Statements regarding the night of the 25th to the 26th of January 1938

Statement n°14: Taken from the September-October copy of Marchons!, page 10

I, myself, witnessed this light and the memory of it is unforgettable. I was 13 years old. It was in the evening before going to bed, on the 25th of January 1938, as we were going out with our parish church group. We thought it was a huge forest fire and for a while we went in its direction. But no, it was much further, and we turned back. The next day, all the newspapers in Europe mentioned it, without really knowing what it was, a “special aurora borealis”, they said …

Statement n°13: From M. Olive

My 83 year-old mother comes from Arques in the Pas de Calais, and she told me that my grandmother and grandfather had seen this orange-coloured aurora borealis on the night of the 25th/26th January 1938, and were very afraid. For them, it was a bad omen which was subsequently confirmed.

Statement n°12: From M. J.P. Artur

As for the conflagration in the sky, my parents-in-law remember the event in 1939 very well and have often told me about it. They were at Meknes in Morocco.

We lived 10 kilometres from Saint-Lô, in the Manche, between the communes of Pont Hébert and Amigny.

One evening, we were in the house and my father called us and said “Come and see; I’ll show you what an aurora borealis is.”

It began to get dark. We went down the steps.

I saw this cloud, a little orange, pink, a little round. Yes, it was quite round, like a big powder puff.

It was very special. I don’t remember if it was more orange than pink, or more pink than orange.

This cloud had a direction, but we didn’t see it moving forward. When we began to watch it, it was at the corner of the house. It came from the east and passed over the west side. When we went back inside it was late, we had seen it move. It had a very slow trajectory towards the west.

We took this cloud to be what Father told us was an aurora borealis. We never spoke of it again.

One day, much later, I heard talk about Fatima and “a sign which will happen everywhere the war will happen”. That made me remember this episode of the cloud with Father.

Even later, I was able to see an aurora borealis, and I realised that it was nothing like what my father had shown us. In an aurora borealis there are long green streaks, nothing like this round, orange cloud. This discovery intrigued me and I then made the link between what our family had seen and the sign announced at Fatima.

Asnelles, Tuesday 30th January 2018.

Statement n°10: From Mme. Clotilde de Q.

Lille, the 30th of December 2017.

I, the undersigned, Clotilde de Q. declare having witnessed, at the end of January 1938, a strange phenomenon: the black night was gently lit by what resembled (I was told) an aurora borealis. Two faint red lights swept the sky, which we had never seen before this date at the end of January 1938.

The witnesses with me were my mother, my sister, my older brothers who were high school students. I was 12 years old and I remember this red sky perfectly well. We lived in the country, 2 kms. from the village of Cassel (in the North of France).

Clotilde de Q.

Statement n°9: From the Father of Mme. T.

Sorry, in January 38 I was only 4 years old, I was put to bed early with the curtains carefully drawn!

Many years later (at least 20), I learned about this aurora borealis (red in colour, it seemed to me) which set a large part of the sky alight.

Clare’s parents gave me a brief account: they saw in this a concordance between the countries having seen it and those who, a few months later, went to war: Russia, Germany, but above all Poland and France … the others … I don’t remember them.

Statement n°8: From M. Dominique C. regarding his mother.

She was born on the 6th of November 1914. At the time of Tuesday the 25th of January 1938, she was working as a solicitor’s clerk with Maître Trouvé [(the predecessor of Maître Fillon who arrived at CF in 1958, the father of François Fillon, this was at Cérans-Foulletourte (Sarthe)].

So, on leaving the office, no doubt around 6 or 7 pm, she saw the sky as if it was alight, very red, and has always told me about this phenomenon. Subsequently, when there was more talk of the events at Fatima, she had no trouble connecting this phenomenon with the revelations of Our Lady, probably around the time of the 50th anniversary.

Statement n°7: From M.K.

I can only report in a very vague way the memory of what my aged mother (June 1913-June 1992) had said a few times when I was around ten years old. (She sometimes told me of her memories of the First and especially the Second World War.)

She spoke to me of this strange light that she had been able to observe with her neighbours in the region of Nimy (Mons) in Hainaut (Belgium) where she was living, whilst still single, at that time.

She spoke of a night in February 1939 (note the little imprecision), before the start of the Second World War. She and her neighbours had even gone outdoors e to observe the phenomenon (where they must have met, wondering what to make of this highly unusual light).

I admit that it’s a vague reminiscence, but I have always been struck by it.

Statement n°6: From M. Marc L.

Regarding the exceptional light on the night of 1938, I have, of course, no memory, having been born in 1959, but I have an indirect witness in the person of a great uncle who died in 1952, who worked for the postal service sorting the mail on the night trains (so that it could be delivered the next morning when the train arrived at the station). He had told of the memory, still present in the minds of my family, of a night in 1938 when the natural outdoor light had been such that they were able to sort the mail in the railway carriage without having to use electric light.

Statement n°5: From M. Pierre L.

I have a sister who is 89, soon to be 90 years old actually, because she was born in Mars, and who remembers this light over the whole of Cherbourg harbour. She was 10 and was staying with an aunt whose house overlooked the harbour, with a cousin her own age and they had still talked of this only about four or five years ago, the cousin having died in 2016. The colours “offered” by Heaven were greens , oranges with a very pronounced red.

Statement n°4: From Mme. Marie-Françoise G.

I was born in 1947, so I didn’t see the so-called aurora borealis of January 1938, but my parents and grandparents definitely saw it.

They were living in the region of Cholet (Maine et Loire). They often spoke to me about it.

The sky was red, and mother told me that it looked like it was streaked with blood. But I don’t know how long it lasted.

They immediately understood the meaning of the message and prepared themselves for war.

Statement n°3: From Mme. Jeanne G.

My grandmother spoke to me about this fire, which, I believe, she and her family saw; she was an adolescent at the time (she was born in 1924), and lived in a little village in Isère.

I also know that afterwards she and her husband were very attached to Fatima.

Statement n°2: From Mme. E

I’ll be 69 at the beginning of November, so I never saw the “aurora borealis of 1938” but I heard talk about it, and a lot of it.

My mother was a total atheist and never stopped repeating that if we saw lights dancing in the sky it was a sign of bad luck, of war. It was unusual to have an aurora borealis at our latitude.

Statement n°1: From M. André M.

I remember hearing at some point that the sky was “on fire”… in Spain. It was during the last war, in 1941, 42 or 43. I was between 6 and 8 years old. Was this alluding to 1938, with a difference and distortion of time…?

I was in Algeria, I don’t remember who told me, but it must have been a child older than me. It made me very afraid, because we were in the middle of the war, I was thinking of fire in the sky… Was the person who told me referring to 1938 in a roundabout way?